Louis Bonaparte

French nobleman, a member of the Bonaparte family, a lieutenant-general in the Russian Army and Governor of the province of Yerevan in 1905.

Louis Bonaparte, as he was known, was born in Meudon, France. He was the second son of Prince Napoléon Bonaparte, who was the son of Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte and of Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.

He was educated with his older brother Victor, Prince Napoléon, then lived a lazy life in Paris at the home of his aunt Mathilde Bonaparte. His father directed him to a military career. As a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, he wasn't allowed to join the French Army and therefore became a lieutenant in the Italian Army in Verona, with the approval of his uncle, King Umberto I of Italy.

Because of anti-French sentiment in the Italian Army, he left Italy in 1890 and entered the Russian Army. In 1895 he became a colonel; in 1902 he was stationed in the Caucasus. When riots broke out in 1905 between Armenians and Azeris in Yerevan, he was named governor of the province of Yerevan and ordered to restore order.

In 1910, he retired from the Russian Army as a lieutenant-general and moved to the family estate in Prangins, Switzerland. At the request of the Russian tsar, he became liaison officer for the Russian Army with the Third Italian Army, led by his cousin Prince Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Aosta.

In 1917, he returned to Prangins, though his later travels included trips to Japan and the United States. He died on 14 October 1932, aged 66, from a stroke. He never married and had no children.